As you indicated, the advertisers need to find the appropriate contexts (conversations), because the customer will not be searching for a sales pitch (or you could also say: the customer is always right [in another post I’ve responded to a tweet Marcy Shinder made regarding shelf space — and I extended her ideas into online / virtual markets, noting that the space is constrained by language — much in the tradition of Wittgenstein’s “wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen” ;] ).

Will companies who are trying to sell goods and services wake up to this? Well, they have woken up to the firstpopular instance of it (twitter.com) — but that will surely not be the last. I see strong growth in more marketplaces for conversations (indeed, I am myself involved in building such marketplaces ;).

Large companies need to adapt to this new economy … and fast — or else they may very well follow in the footsteps of GM, BofA and/or similar oversized behemoths.